


let your heart be light

by qiras



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: But only if you squint, F/M, I don't, Pregnancy, background sam/bucky/natasha, because do i write anything else?, no, unmitigated unapologetic fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 11:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13234314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qiras/pseuds/qiras
Summary: if one more person asks darcy when she's due or tries to touch her stomach, she'll scream. and steve will also scream, because heavily pregnant women are not as easily calmed down as they are pissed off. or at least darcy is.(aka, you're on fucking thin ice, tony.)





	let your heart be light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writer314](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer314/gifts).



> based on the prompt "baby's first Christmas". baby, being darcy and steve's child, had a different idea of what ought to constitute "first" Christmas.

Darcy screams.

Steve hears it from roughly one floor and forty-five feet away, and he bolts, taking stairs three at a time and making it to her side in roughly three-point-seven seconds.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”

She doesn’t answer.

She is busy yelling. 

“Anthony Edward Stark, I’m going to fucking kill you!” Her hands are planted firmly on her back, providing a little counterbalance for her heavy, rounded stomach.

Steve takes her elbow and gently directs her to a chair. He drags another chair over, sits, then places her feet on his lap, pops her shoes off, and starts rubbing her feet. Darcy was supposed to give birth on December 16th.

It’s December 24th. Darcy is not happy about that.

“I don’t like hot sauce, and you know it, asshole! Even if I did like it, why the fuck would you put it in my hot cocoa!”

Steve winces. Darcy is also not happy about the absence of caffeine (also known as “the drug of the gods”-- primarily to Darcy). The only thing that begins to make up for that is the ridiculous amounts of hot chocolate Darcy drinks. The last person to touch her hot cocoa was promptly zapped across the globe by Jane for upsetting her best friend. (That would be Clint, unsurprisingly, so no one was terribly worried about his ability to get back, but a jet was sent, anyway.) And the last time Darcy was this angry, she was mad for three days. Steve nearly slept on the couch. Voluntarily.

All this to safely say this won’t end well, but maybe Steve can shorten the length of time she’s angry by alleviating her anger now, instead of after she’s had time to stew.

Darcy's tirade continues unabated. “I am not afraid to call Pepper on you, and you know that!”

Tony peeks out from behind the wall of items he had assembled, presumably for protection from Steve's tiny, utterly terrifying wife. “I'm sorry! JARVIS told me it was something that could start labor. Well, sex was on the list too, but currently I am enjoying life too much to suggest that.”

“I would think,” Darcy says menacingly, “you would also be enjoying life too much to touch my hot chocolate.”

“It would kind of be worth it if you went into labor. No offense, but the days since your due date have not been pleasant for any of us.” Darcy glares and looks ready to snap, and Tony quickly adds, “Plus, I'm kind of excited to meet the little parasite.”

“Tony!” Steve exclaims. But anymore, it’s hard for either of them to summon up any anger over Tony’s nickname for their baby. It’s affectionate, really. Tony is just kind of emotionally stunted, so, you know. Join the club.

Darcy is still not quite appeased, until Tony says, “I'll go get you more hot chocolate.”

“Fine,” she says. Then Steve’s hands hit a spot in her heel, and she moans. “Hooooly hell, right there! Don’t stop!”

Tony cringes. “Yeah, I’m gonna leave now. I’m not even gonna make up an excuse, or a reason why. I’m just gonna go.”

Fine with Steve.

Six months since he'd married Darcy, plus most of them spent in this building, equaled very, very little uninterrupted time together. Sam and Bucky delight in trying to catch them mid-coitus, the pervs, no matter how angry Natasha gets.

(Well, that’s not strictly true. Natasha’s a mixture of exasperated and amused. She definitely wants a niece or nephew, but since that mission is mostly accomplished, she finds it mostly funny. If she’d really been angry about it, Sam and Bucky would never dared to continue doing it. Aside from how terrifying Natasha could be, it would completely screw with their home life. They’d both be sleeping on the couch.)

The point of all this being, Steve is not at all sorry for Tony to leave them alone. Darcy moans again, and he thinks it is probably safe to speak. “Do you still want to do Christmas Eve with everybody tonight?”

“Of course!” Darcy exclaims. “I mean, even if the little sprog isn’t on the outside to see it, I still want them to have as much weirdo family togetherness as possible shoved down their throats. Plus,” she smirks at Steve through heavy-lidded eyes, biting her lip, “the Christmas Eve shindig has some pretty good memories for us.”

 

**Roughly 10:30, Christmas Eve, 2016**

“So, Steve,” Natasha said. “How long have you and Darcy known each other?”

“Um, one month, fifteen days,” he looked at his watch, “twenty hours, and thirty-five minutes.”

“And how long, exactly, have you been in love with her?”

“One month, fifteen days, and twenty-one hours.”

Natasha surveyed him over the rim of her glass. “After her comment on what, exactly, Donald Trump could do with his tiny hands?”

“Pretty much,” he agreed.

“Well, Stevie Wonder, reliable sources tell me you should really do something about that.”

He bit his lip.

(On the other side of the room, Darcy groaned and told Janey that “it should be illegal for him to do that in public??? After everything I’ve done to help him make this Christmas good for Bucky, this is how he repays me? By turning me on more than all the bulbs on this stupid Christmas tree combined?” Jane agreed absentmindedly, her own attention focused on Thor, who was looking especially muscle-y. Steve didn’t hear a thing.)

“I don’t know, Nat,” he said slowly. “I just...”

“Rogers. I am not dealing with any of your bullshit. It’s Christmas. Go over to the girl and ask her out. She’ll say yes. You deserve to be happy. Just. Go.”

Steve went.

(Sam asked Nat, “Does he have any idea you guys just reenacted a scene from _Love Actually_? Like, the first few lines of that, anyway...” Natasha didn’t think Steve had seen that one yet. As usual, Natasha was right.)

“Hey,” Steve said nervously, looking at Darcy.

Darcy choked on her drink-- subtly, of course-- and turned around. An entirely unhelpful voice in her head was hissing at her to be cool. She replied that the voice was not helping and she was doing her best. Not out loud, thankfully. That would have undermined everything she’d just told herself.

Okay, so maybe she’s going a little bit crazy. Don’t subtweet her.

Anyway.

“Hi, Steve!” she said brightly. Maybe too brightly. Oh, holy fuck, can’t she act like a normal person for once?!

“Uh, I was wondering... I mean...” Steve rubbed the back of his neck and cursed himself out silently but very thoroughly. Spit it out already! Hell!

Darcy, meanwhile, was nearing the beginning of a cool internal panic. Her anxiety kicked in (fun, thanks a lot!) and her brain went into overdrive. He was probably wondering if she could back off because she was being obvious about being kind of completely in love with him and it was creeping it out.

No big deal, that would just crush Darcy’s heart and soul momentarily. She may be a strong independent woman who don’t need no man, but she also had kind of a thing about people liking her. Abandonment issues. They weren’t uncommon if you grew up in the foster care system, you know. But she’d get over it! You know, eventually.

Suddenly, there was a great deal of laughter and looks being cast their way. Darcy’s face flushed and she felt sad and vaguely ill simultaneously. She was gonna be a lonely cat lady, yeah, but they didn’t have to rub it in!

(Well, she’d still probably have Janey. She could be Aunt Darcy. So not lonely. But still a cat lady. She wasn’t really a dog person.)

But then Darcy looked up. Oh. They weren’t laughing at her total awkwardness. They were laughing because Bucky was balancing above them, holding mistletoe. In fairness, Darcy would’ve laughed too. Barnes looked fucking ridiculous.

With all the same planning, thought, and healthy, rational fear Steve had when he jumped out of planes, he decided it was now or never, leaned forward, and kissed her. And he swore the world stopped.

Darcy tasted like the spiked eggnog she’d been drinking (and had probably spiked herself). One of his hands cupped her face, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb. The other buried itself in her beautiful curly hair, feeling its silky slide between his fingers.

It was sweet and chaste. Then Darcy came to her senses.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Um,” Steve laughed a little bit, completely breathless. “I really like you. And I _really_ like kissing you. Actually, I want to date you?”

Darcy couldn’t say anything except the tiniest, “Oh.”

“But, uh, we can still be friends! If you don’t, if you don’t...” Steve trailed off awkwardly, vowing to himself he’d do something to Bucky later because this was obviously his doing (glitter in the air vent, maybe?).

But then Darcy kissed him.

This one was... less chaste. Not less sweet, precisely, but certainly more passionate.

“I’ll take that as a yes?” Steve said hopefully.

Darcy rolled her eyes fondly. “Yes, you dork.”

There were wolf whistles and catcalls all around them, and suddenly, they remembered they had an audience. Natasha yelled at them to get a room.

They got a room.

And they kept “getting a room” (read: having sex). It only took Steve six months to propose (“Impulse control? What’s that?” Bucky had laughed) and once he did... they just got married. It wasn’t like either of them had flesh-and-blood family who’d want to come to their wedding, and all their friends were in New York, anyway. A big wedding would be more trouble than it was worth, they agreed. It only took Pepper and Natasha five hours to put a little ceremony together for Steve and Darcy, who were married only a week after Steve proposed.

Darcy’s pregnancy came to light when Steve proposed. Yes, _when_. He came home to find her crying, curled up in the middle of their bed. She’d been to the med wing because she couldn't stop throwing up, and the blood test had come back very, very positive for pregnancy.

Like, three months positive.

“What kind of mother am I gonna be?” she'd sobbed. “I didn't even know I was pregnant!”

Darcy hadn't wanted to listen to any of the eminently reasonable things Steve said (“Lots of people don't know they're pregnant for the first the months, Darcy. You'll be a great mom!”), electing to find other things to be upset over instead.

“We've only been together for six months! I mean, I assumed we'd have kids, eventually--” and Steve’s whole body filled with warmth at that-- “but not now. And isn't pregnancy out of wedlock, like, against your morals or something?”

She was grasping at straws, desperately trying to explain her upset as something other than fear, and they both knew it. “Well,” Steve said lightly, “my ma would definitely be disappointed. And, uh,” he walked over to his dresser draw and pulled out a little blue box, “now that you bring it up, I've actually had this for a little while...”

The baby wasn't why they'd gotten married so quickly, but, well... it didn't hurt. Darcy said she was sure Sarah Rogers was looking down from heaven, and she'd hate for her grandchild to be born a bastard. And since Darcy's first impression on her mother-in-law would have to be in heaven, Darcy joked, it’d be best to “do things right,” as they said.

 

**Roughly 10:30, Christmas Eve, 2017**

“Steve, can you get me some eggnog?” Darcy bats her eyes, and Steve drops a kiss to her forehead before moving away.

“So,” Natasha says shrewdly, “how long have you been in labor, Darcy?”

Darcy really hates it when Natasha does that. “Uh, just about a half hour?” she hedges.

“Lie.” Natasha calls her out easily. “How long?”

“Fine,” Darcy relents. “It’s been three hours.”

Natasha nods and takes a drink. “And you haven’t told Steve yet because?”

“Well, the contractions are still ten minutes apart, and not exactly regular yet, so it’s really not a big deal. I don’t have to go to the hospital yet, anyway. I just... wanted to not worry about it for a little while longer. It’s going to be very painful in not that long. I wanted to be able to not feel freaked out and under watch for as long as possible, I guess.” Natasha hums. And,” Darcy adds, “I don’t need Tony thinking his stupid hot sauce induced my labor.”

“That can be arranged,” Nat promises, and she grins, excitedly, but very, very, mischievously. It’s generally not desirable to be on the other end of that particular smile, but Darcy doesn’t quite feel sorry for Tony. He did put hot sauce in her hot chocolate.

“And hey,” Natasha says, “promise me you’ll tell Steve once the contractions are down to eight minutes apart?”

“Okay,” Darcy says, and then Steve is back with her eggnog (not spiked this year) and they are talking, laughing, with this, their chosen family.

Well, for, like, another half hour, anyway.

Because then Darcy’s water breaks, and telling Steve she’s in labor becomes unnecessary. He kind of figures it out.

Sophia Anne Rogers-Lewis is born at 4:07 a.m. on Christmas Day, 2017. Having a birthday on Christmas might be rough, but it makes a for a very easy “where do babies come from” conversation. Darcy just says Sophie was a Christmas present. It works for at least five years.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i hope you like it!


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